PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has told the gov­ern­ment that the coun­try is in a “cri­sis of crime,” and does not have the “lux­u­ry of time.”

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, it sug­gest­ed that among oth­er things that the gov­ern­ment should seek in­ter­na­tion­al ex­per­tise to as­sist and that a crime cri­sis team be set up to re­view the de­ploy­ment fo all se­cu­ri­ty re­sources in the coun­try.

The Cham­ber sug­gest­ed that clos­er to home the gov­ern­ment should seek as­sis­tance from its CARI­COM part­ners who have been suc­cess­ful in deal­ing with sim­i­lar “crime up­surges.”

There have al­ready been 26 mur­ders in the first 20 days of the year.

The Cham­ber not­ed that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young “in his lead­er­ship role must ac­knowl­edge that we are not just in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion but in fact in a cri­sis re­gard­ing crime - and we do not have the lux­u­ry of time to deal with it.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Cham­ber “the present state of af­fairs dic­tates that ur­gent ac­tion must be tak­en now.”

It not­ed that de­spite the best ef­forts the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), “does not by it­self have the ca­pac­i­ty to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion, and oth­er arms of the se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture must be mo­bilised.”

The Cham­ber, re­spond­ing to Young’s state­ments, said “we recog­nise the Min­is­ter’s ref­er­ence to tech­nol­o­gy in the fight against crime and en­dorse this. We ful­ly sup­port a strong pres­ence of se­cu­ri­ty forces in high-crime ar­eas.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the Cham­ber is look­ing for­ward to meet­ing with Min­is­ter Young as soon as pos­si­ble, giv­en his stat­ed in­ten­tion to meet with cham­bers of com­merce and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

In an ef­fort to fight crime and even pri­or to any dis­cus­sion with the Min­is­ter the cham­ber has pro­vid­ed what it be­lieves could be ini­tia­tives which can help in the fight against crime. These in­clude the use of the De­fence Force to work with the po­lice.

The Cham­ber is al­so sug­gest­ing that a list of the coun­try’s most want­ed crim­i­nals be pub­lished and cir­cu­lat­ed in the me­dia.

It al­so sug­gest­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a “crime cri­sis team re­view­ing the de­ploy­ment of all the Se­cu­ri­ty re­sources of the coun­try.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Cham­ber, the gov­ern­ment should al­so “seek as­sis­tance from our CARI­COM part­ners who have suc­cess­ful­ly re­duced sim­i­lar crime up­surges in their own coun­try.”

It was al­so of the view that help should be sought from “in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts who can be brought in to sup­port the crime-fight­ing ef­fort.”

It sug­gest­ed the need for in­creased com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic about crime-fight­ing strate­gies, “with met­rics that show their suc­cess/fail­ure to im­prove na­tion­al con­fi­dence.”

In ad­di­tion, the Cham­ber al­so asked the gov­ern­ment to en­sure “that the tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture, (drones, air sup­port, dig­i­tal fin­ger­print­ing, the CCTV cam­eras with fa­cial recog­ni­tion, the Na­tion­al op­er­a­tions Cen­tre etc) are ful­ly op­er­a­tional and utilised.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Cham­ber, while the coun­try is in a “dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, it can be solved if the gov­ern­ment ac­cepts the re­al­i­ty, and makes solv­ing/re­duc­ing crime a pri­or­i­ty.”

The T&T Cham­ber said it re­mains com­mit­ted to ful­ly sup­port and col­lab­o­rate with all le­git­i­mate agen­cies in the fight against crime.

“Sav­ing our coun­try from this spi­ralling crime is crit­i­cal to our cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors well­be­ing, and the preser­va­tion of our very way of life,” the Cham­ber said.

The spike in gun­play in the city trig­gered an emer­gency meet­ing of the Cham­ber on Fri­day.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Gabriel Faria told Guardian Me­dia that the meet­ing in­clud­ed the cur­rent board, mem­bers of the cham­ber and past pres­i­dents.

“We are ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that there ap­pears to be a poli­ti­cis­ing of the crime sit­u­a­tion,” Faria said.

He said that by poli­ti­cis­ing the up­surge in crime, the Gov­ern­ment showed a lack of em­pa­thy to­wards the vic­tims.

He said that in the past two days, the Cham­ber held sev­er­al in­ter­nal meet­in­gs as the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is in a “state of wor­ry.”